As the fabrication techniques for semiconductor devices has progressed, manufacturers have been placing an increasingly larger number of devices on a chip by increasing the integration density of semiconductor devices. Accordingly, a critical dimension (CD) in a design rule is gradually reduced in order to increase the circuit density.
In order to increase the circuit density, it is necessary to reduce the sizes of elements inside the semiconductor devices and reduce the lengths and widths of interconnections which couple the elements together. Moreover, the resistances of interconnections must be small so that electric signals can be transferred with minimal loss within the semiconductor devices through interconnections having narrow widths.
In a typical integrated circuit, there may be many metallization layers and interconnecting via layers formed in a back end of line (BEOL) interconnect structure. The BEOL interconnect structure connects various devices (e.g. transistors, capacitors, etc.) to form functional circuits. During fabrication, it is necessary to form cuts and connections of metal lines to create the desired connectivity to implement a given design. As critical dimensions continue to shrink, this can be challenging. It is therefore desirable to have improvements to address the aforementioned challenges.